Marketing Nuggets from Dr. Dan-o

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It’s too easy to find companies who are not market orientated (Yahoo, Twitter, Intel); the same cannot be said for those few firms who are outward-looking and thoroughly understand how to be externally orientated towards the market. (A complete description of market orientation can be found here).

While listening to the Re/Code Decode podcast with Kara Swisher, I am convinced that Warby Parker with their co-CEOs Dave Gilboa and Neil Blumenthal have created a truly market orientated company. Eyeglasses are an analog product from the analog world, however, co-CEOs Dave and Neil completely understand their customers, found ways to create value using digital technologies vis-à-vis their direct competitors and run a flat organization with incredibly strong inter-firm communication. I mean how theory Y is it to have co-CEOs!

This is something to check out today – along with Re/Code’s other excellent podcasts Re/code Media with Peter Kafka, Too Embarrassed to Ask with Lauren Goode and Kara Swisher, and finally Re/Code Reply.

Things tend to slow down during the summer and I always take the opportunity to load up on some excellent new books. We need to learn – we need feed our heads with takeaways (I like to call them nuggets) to create our knowledge base. Books are excellent learning tools (please see the previous 2013 and 2014 Book Recommendation posts) but this year I have some non-book recommendations as well. Welcome to the 2015 Summer Book (and a bunch of other stuff) Recommendation List!

These are in no particular order – go to Amazon or Google to find further detail on these items. If you have a more particular interest, drop me an email and we’ll go deeper into a more specific topic OK.

ENJOY!

Dr. Dan-o

Book Recommendations

Talk Like TED: The 9 Public-Speaking Secrets of the World’s Top Minds by Carmine Gallo – This book is truly excellent (I finished it a month ago) and is perfect for all my past and present Professional Selling students. This might be the best one-stop-shop for learning verbal and non-verbal presentation skills.

The Small BIG: Small Changes that Spark Big Influence by Steve J. Martin, Noah J. Goldstein, and Robert B. Cialdini – Professor Cialdini is the godfather of persuasion research and anything with his name on it has to be nuggetworthy. His masterpiece Influence: Science and Practice (on the 2013 list) is the best persuasion book every written.

The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything by Ken Robinson – I’ve been hunting for a book that can define Passion for sometime and this one is solid. He does a mean TED talk as well.

Slim by Design: Mindless Eating Solutions for Everyday Life by Brian Wansink, Ph.D., – What can I say? I’m a little thick around the middle and I need some nuggets from Professor Wansink who in my eyes is the model academic. Not only is he fantastic in the classroom, he also writes rigorous double-blind peer-reviewed research in the top academic journals in addition to, incredible popular press books based on his research. Now that is how it is done!

Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well by Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen – For those of us who manager people – this is a book for you. For those of us you who depend on the evaluations of others for promotion – this book is for you.

Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull – This is certainly the best leadership book written in the last year (period) and it might be one of the best leadership books of all time exploring innovation at creative firms – WOW.

Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World by Gary Vaynerchuk – this is Gary’s third social media book and it’s a good primer for those getting started in social/digital marketing (hint, hint Fall 2015 Direct Marketing/Social Media students).

Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli – It wouldn’t be a Dr. Dan-o book recommendation list without something about Apple, correct? This book is a very interesting read and is a good yin to Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs yang. Schlender paints a very different picture of Jobs and spent significantly more time, as well as, time periods with Jobs compared to Isaacson’s 18 to 24 months.

CD/Audio Course

The Art of Storytelling: From Parents to Professionals by Hannah B. Harvey, Ph.D., (from the Great Courses) – I love storytelling and this 4-disk set is very, very comprehensive.

The New Yorker Articles

I’m a HUGE fan of the New Yorker magazine. While the topics can range to almost anything (truly anything), whatever lands in the magazine is done with amazing detail (i.e., New Yorker articles are more book-like than magazine-like). Here are some of my favorites from the last year or so (with links!).

I can clearly say that podcasts have been my #1 go-to source for picking up nuggets in the last two years. Moreover, podcasts are excellent when you’re doing mindless activities like commuting or cutting the grass. You can find these in iTunes or any of your favorite podcast players (i.e., Stitcher, Overcast). Here are some of my favorites…

The David Diehl Show: Sports, Tech, and a Bunch of other Stuff with Co-Host Dr. Dan-o – presented by Today’s Business – Of course my favorite podcasts is the one I helped create. David is an excellent friend and host and with Today’s Business, we created something unique that intersects the sports and tech world!

The HBR Ideacast – for those of you who had me in class – we read A LOT of Harvard Business Review articles. This podcast is on par with those articles…

Stanford’s Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders – It is absolutely amazing the caliber of speakers who appear on this show. I bet 50% of the books I purchased in the last two years are from ETL speakers.

Social Media Marketing with Michael Stelzner – This is probably the best “how-to” social media podcast out there…

The Marketing Companion Podcast with Mark Schaefer and Tom Webster – Since this podcast launched, I have not missed an episode…

NPR TED Radio Hour with Guy Raz – Spectacular! I also purchase a number of books from TED speakers. The other huge bonus with this podcast is it features multiple TED speakers on a similar theme. In other words, you get more nuggets from more people in a shorter amount of time…brilliant!

The Torch – presented by The Great Courses with host Ed Leon – from physics to history to business, The Great Courses has it all…

The Talk Show with John Gruber – the best Apple/tech podcast (period!) – the only Apple podcast that is influential enough to have Apple Sr. VP of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller as a guest.

Documentaries (try Netflix or Amazon Prime)

Both of the following documentaries explore the “dark side” (AKA user privacy) of the social media world.

I’m a fan of the Social Media Marketing podcast with Michael Stelzner and last week, he hit on a topic that is perfect for my deep dive into professional selling and social media nuggets. In the podcast, Michael interviewed Tom Martin, author of The Invisible Sale: How to Build a Digitally Powered Marketing and Sales System to Better Prospect, Qualify and Close Leads. Yes, that’s a pretty long title but nuggetworthy nonetheless.

I’m happy to say that Michael and Tom spend most of the interview discussing ways to use social media to find more leads. Or perhaps I should re-word that last statement and say – social media can bring more leads to the sales person. This is inbound marketing personified but with a better story (read=more nuggets) on how it can be used by sales people.

While listening to my weekly dose of the Social Media Marketing Podcast by Michael Stelzner, I heard an excellent nugget that I had to pass along. Michael was interviewing Kim Garst on how to use Twitter to increase traffic to your blog.

At the 37:35 mark, I heard the best nugget of the podcast when Kim brought up a web based Twitter utility called ManagerFlitter. Not only does it help with removing spammers that are following you on Twitter, it also has a much more robust search function where it is easier to find or track real-time conversations around different keywords – cool!

With as much time as I spend in the car, I am happy to make the time productive via listening to various podcasts and learning new nuggets. Fortune’s Brainstorm podcast (available on iTunes) is the newest podcast I’m following. The first guest was Marc Andreessen while the second was none other then executive of the week Sheryl Sandberg.